Surfacing

Surviving a near-death experience

Digital Art Collage by Stella Kalaw

Hiroshi looked like a sleek porpoise as he gracefully dove off the side of the boat, cleanly slicing through the water and effortlessly propelling himself away with a steady, perfectly executed crawl. Charlene tentatively climbed down the small ladder and began treading water. Following behind her, I slipped into the cool lake, my senses made alive on that sultry August day. I swam, front crawl, back crawl, breast stroke, then turned around, lifted my goggles and noticed the boat had drifted some distance away.

Charlene caught my gaze, and I saw the panic.

“Just tread water,” I remember shouting. “They’ll be back.”

And then I made the mistake of getting too close. She grabbed my arm in a vise-like grip and we began to struggle, bobbing below the surface, rising up, gulping for air, sinking down again.

Later, my husband, Neil, who had remained on the boat, told me it took him a moment to register the abject terror on my face. While John, the boat’s skipper, re-started the motor, Neil dove into the water. Suddenly beside me, he pushed Charlene further under. As she released her grip, I helped Neil force a lifebuoy, tossed from the boat, over her head, and kicked away, still gasping for air. I sensed Hiroshi watching silently from a distance.

I remember nothing beyond the sound of the motor as we headed to shore. While Neil drove the 25 miles back to town, I obsessively reviewed the what-ifs, grateful that his life-saving training had kicked in.

“You saved my life,” I told him, again and again.

Charlene and I remained work colleagues for the following year. I can’t recall a single time she ever spoke to me about the incident, nor I to her. We’d greet each other with a tentative nod or hello as we passed in the corridors, careful not to stand next to each other at staff parties.

For decades, I continued swimming in lakes and oceans, never venturing too far from shore. If someone touched me in the water, I jumped, unnerved, my breathing uneven, the edges of a panic attack circling like shark fins, barely visible below the surface. I felt safest in pools.

Everything changed in my 50s when an acquaintance mentioned that she swam regularly across Meech Lake. I tell her I love to swim, but crossing a lake is daunting.

“I tow a flotation device,” she adds, “to be more visible in the water.”

 “Can it hold your weight if you need to stop for a while?” I ask a bit too casually.

“Definitely,” she says.

Neil and I search the internet. Devices were pricey, and I didn’t like the boxy shape.

“I’ll make one. More elegant and much cheaper,” he assures me.

He purchased a fluorescent green noodle, bright red construction tape, nylon rope and a belt with a buckle that was easy to adjust underwater. With his small hacksaw, he sliced the noodle into three equal parts, taped them together like a stack of dynamite, then ran the rope through the holes of the bottom noodles. With two meters lying slack, he attached the rope to the belt. I’m delighted with this light, zany, screamingly visible invention. Total cost: $7.00.

_______________

I stand on a dock, eyeing the grayish pink granite boulder several hundred meters to my left, shaped like a partially beached whale. Through binoculars, I spot a tree trunk with jagged leafless branches spouting from the rock. With the belt snugly around my waist, I climb down the dock ladder, toss the device as far as possible into the water so the rope won’t entangle my legs, and head diagonally across the lake.

I feel a new lightness of being. Panic never washes over me. My feet soon touch mossy shale and knobby roots below the water line. I slip, clamber onto the boulder, hug the smooth, weathered bark of the tree trunk and wave towards the distant dock. Neil raises his arm in triumph.

I reclaim the meditative joys of swimming, the deep pleasures of my now older body, buoyant and alive in opaque, blue-green waters. Drifting on my back, watching the hawks soar, I feel safe, seen, yet alone. Surprisingly, my near-drowning experience can now be told with wry wit.

I say, “John’s family not only owned the boat, but ran the local funeral home, a convenience if they needed to transport my body from the hills of Eastern Kentucky to Montreal.”

I feel giddy with the many options for re-visioning my story, untethered from the well-worn version and fears.

Of course, near-drowning has left its imprint. I insisted my son complete lifeguard certification, grateful he was a persuadable only child. So too with my grandchildren. Swimming lessons are my gift to them. The true bonus comes when I ask what they learned at their first life-saving classes. Without hesitation, they say, “Never get too close to a person panicked in the water; swim backwards towards them so you can kick away.”

My grandchildren and I play tag in the lake. They are teaching me to do an elegant stride jump off the dock. “Keep your head up, then arms down, Bubby,” they say. “Scissor kick your legs.”  I keep trying.

And, Charlene? Our paths never crossed again. I wonder at the emotional energy it took so many years ago to sustain that fragile, fearful silence as if our throats remained constricted to not breathe the air, as if still under water. In most situations where something should be said, I now take a deep breath and break the silence. I don’t always get it right, but, like the stride jump, I keep trying.